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Ohio prison staff open and destroy confidential, legal mail
The Marshall Project - Cleveland reviewed four years of lawsuits and complaints from nearly three dozen people who allege that state prison employees are opening confidential letters or denying the delivery of sensitive legal mail. Some incarcerated people say they have been punished for filing official complaints over the mishandling of their mail. They say they’ve lost their rights to access the courts and transmit privileged information to their attorneys without the system eavesdropping.
Even mail from local and federal courts isn’t getting through, making it harder for incarcerated people to appeal their convictions or file lawsuits over alleged mistreatment and abuse while behind bars.
Prison walls shouldn’t stop a person from receiving the court records that were used to convict and sentence them. But a 2021 pandemic-era crackdown on drug smuggling in the mail has delayed or prevented these basic legal documents, which are often readily available to the public, from reaching people inside Ohio’s 28 state prisons.
With visitation paused due to the pandemic, administrators continued to find drugs and people using them in prison. They began requiring attorneys and courts to obtain state-issued labels, or control numbers. Any envelope without one would be processed like regular mail, which cannot exceed five pages and is opened and read outside the presence of the addressee.
In a one-page memo issued months into the new policy, prison system officials signaled to county court clerks that they need not follow the control number system. The volume of legal mail, which is logged, time-stamped and certified as delivered, plummeted from more than 10,000 pieces a month to less than 3,000 a month by the end of last year.
Read our investigation here.
– Doug Livingston
Disciplinary counsel recommends suspending Celebrezze from practicing law
The Ohio Disciplinary Counsel called Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Judge Leslie Ann Celebrezze dishonest, and said she had left a stain on the judicial system and that arrogance likely led to her legal troubles.
Disciplinary Counsel Joseph Caligiuri blasted Celebrezze in a 13-page brief after the judge asked the Ohio Board of Professional Conduct to only give her a public reprimand for 15 rule violations. She has already admitted to steering hundreds of thousands of dollars in receivership work from lucrative divorce cases to her longtime friend Mark Dottore.
“To protect the integrity of the institution, (I urge) this panel to recommend an actual suspension from the practice of law,” Caligiuri wrote on June 13.
Celebrezze did not reply to a request for comment.
Caligiuri’s reply to Celebrezze’s request comes days after a visiting judge ruled that Dottore must repay hundreds of thousands for unauthorized expenses and overbilling to a Strongsville couple. He vowed to appeal the ruling.
Dottore and Celebrezze are both at the center of an FBI investigation, which started after The Marshall Project - Cleveland began investigating their relationship in 2023. Celebrezze has admitted to assigning lucrative cases to Dottore. She approved nearly $500,000 in fees for his company, Dottore Cos. LLC, between January 2017 and June 2023, The Marshall Project - Cleveland reported.
Caligiuri’s terse filing criticizes Celebrezze for how she behaved both as a longtime judge and during his investigation.
“During the hearing, respondent — a sitting judge — invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to (the disciplinary counsel’s) limited questions, thus ending any inquiry into her conduct,” Caligiuri wrote.
Celebrezze was captured on video by a private investigator after spending hours at Dottore’s home and office on workdays. The private investigator also recorded them kissing outside a restaurant. She also spent over 300 hours talking on the phone with Dottore in one year, Caligiuri wrote.
Celebrezze has admitted in court papers to being in love with Dottore, but both have denied a romantic relationship. Celebrezze is playing the victim, Caligiuri wrote.
Caligiuri said that it was reasonable for people to conclude, “based on the intimate kiss, the undisclosed daytime encounters at Dottore’s home, and the undisclosed nighttime encounters over drinks, that the two were engaged in a sexual relationship.”
In urging the board to suspend Celebrezze, Caligiuri cited a previous case involving a judge and quoted, “The primary purpose of judicial discipline is to protect the public, (and) guarantee the evenhanded administration of justice.”
“There is simply no place in our justice system for dishonest judges,” he wrote. “Such dishonesty has a profound impact on the public’s perception of our judiciary.”
– Mark Puente
Exoneree’s estate funds justice work after death
Advocates, attorneys and exonerees gathered recently at Cleveland State University’s College of Law to honor Isaiah Andrews, who spent 45 years wrongfully imprisoned and was exonerated in 2020 with help from the Ohio Innocence Project.
Those who knew Andrews — including lawyers who helped free him and other formerly incarcerated men — shared stories at an event on June 10 of his friendship and his lasting impact on Cleveland and beyond. Andrews died of cancer at 83 in 2022.
Alfred Cleveland, who developed a deep friendship with Andrews while they were incarcerated at Richland Correctional Institution, said funds from Andrews’ wrongful conviction settlement are now being used to support the community and exonerees. The state of Ohio awarded $3 million to Andrews’ estate in late 2023.
Cleveland, co-founder of Voices of Injustice, wrote, directed and produced the play “The Lynched Among Us,” which tells stories of exonerees and wrongful convictions. A donation from Andrews’ estate helped Cleveland pay actors and purchase clothes and props. The play debuted at CSU in October.
“It’s all because of his struggle and his suffering throughout all that time that he was compensated. And now, we can do the play. This is all because of him,” Cleveland said. “We wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t gotten that donation.”
Cleveland said he feels closest to Andrews when working on the play, which is inspired by Andrews’ legacy.
CSU’s Terry Gilbert Wrongful Conviction Clinic also received a donation from Friedman, Gilbert + Gerhardstein, the firm that represented Andrews. It announced the creation of the “Isaiah Andrews — FG+G Fellowship,” an honorary designation for law students who continue working on wrongful conviction cases after their coursework ends.
“We’re really thankful for the donation. It is impactful that it is honoring him, and it helps us to continue to assist people in Isaiah’s position,” said Lisa Greig, the clinic’s director. “This way, we will have, in perpetuity, hundreds of students who will have that title and he will be remembered that way.”
– Brittany Hailer